Gameplay
Written by Josef Cullinane - 1702298 Genre and goals The game falls into the genre of political strategy, and will therefore contain gameplay elements reminiscent of those in games such as Balance of Power (1985) and Sid Meier’s ‘Civilization’ series (latest title released 2016). The player will take control of the Chief Advisor to the King and be placed in charge of all of the information that enters the Royal Court (and thus makes its way to the King himself). They will deal with all of the families in the Court and manage their relationship(s) with the Kingdom. The player will be able to speak to each family’s representative individually in order to seek out their concerns, wishes and other desires in regards to theirs or other families’ standing in the Kingdom. Cause and effect of player actions Each family’s representative will make various requests to the Advisor to pass along to the King, which will have both a negative and positive impact on the families involved. For example, should the Gerard family - who handle the Kingdom’s law enforcement - request money to hire more guardsmen to patrol the country roads between towns, the positive impact would be fewer ransacked caravans, but the negative would be the increased cost. This would increase the player’s standing with the Gerard family, as well as the Dichet family - who handle farming - as more of their produce is reaching its destination, but decrease the player’s standing with the Wells family, who handle much of the Kingdom’s money, including the wages of the Kingdom’s official staff. Long and short term effects Your decisions will also have long and short term effects, for example in the situation above, the long term effect on the Wells family would be that your standing with them returns to its previous level once the increased stock going to and from places turns into increased sales, and thus more money for the Kingdom. Bribery Representatives from each family will also be able to bribe the player to either collect damning information about other families or to pass information about their own family onto the king. Accepting the bribe would increase the standing the player has with the involved family, but the player runs the risk of being found out, which would result in a Bad End. The player can also make the decision to refuse the bribe and inform the King of that family’s actions, which would have drastic effects on that family’s standing within the court as well as the player’s standing with that family. Council There will be set events in the game in which the King will call for a Council of his full court, in which each family’s representative, the Chief Advisor (the player) and the King himself will be present to discuss the actions and duties everyone has in the Kingdom. During this council, those who have negative views on the player might speak against their actions to the King directly, while those with a positive view might come to their defence. Depending on each family’s standing with the court, the player’s own standing with the King will increase or decrease. The player’s standing with the King himself will only change during the Council, meaning that the player must also try to ruin the standing of families that dislike them or improve their own standing with those families, as the King will trust or distrust the player more until the next Council is called. Each family will also be able to make requests directly to the King, which he will grant or deny based on that family’s standing in the Court itself. These things will not affect the player’s standing with each family, but families who have been negatively impacted by the King’s wishes might come to you after the Council has ended to alter or revert these actions. Crises At various points in the game, the Kingdom will be faced with war, famine, disease or some other event that puts the Kingdom and its citizens in peril. In these events, the player will have to make various decisions in order to ensure that the Kingdom weathers whatever is happening. For example, should there be a famine caused by diseased crops, the player would have to decide whether to divert more money to the Dichet family grow a different crop, to give money to the Searlas family - who are the Kingdom’s scholars and scientists - to find a cure for the diseased crops, to simply use money to buy crops from a neighbouring kingdom or even invade a neighbouring kingdom to pillage its farms for food. The player will also have to manage things like rationing food to the citizenry and handling the increased crime rate caused by people stealing your - now scarce - food supply. The player’s actions during the crisis will not affect their standing with any family - this will happen based on how well they revert things back to normal after the crisis is over, how they reward (or don’t reward) those who were of the greatest help during the crisis, how many normal citizens died and various other elements deemed important to each family. These events will serve as both an interesting challenge to the player to break up regular gameplay and a way for them to dramatically increase their standing with a family that dislikes them should they handle it well, or vice versa should they handle it poorly. Standing The player’s standing with each family and each family’s standing within the Court would be represented via a vertical rectangle containing a gradient going - bottom to top - from red to yellow to green, representing poor, neutral and good standing respectively. Two arrows will be visible on the rectangle - one the left and one on the right. The left arrow will represent the player’s standing with the family and the right arrow will represent the family’s standing with the King - each arrow will move up and down independently based on the player’s actions. Related Articles: Setting & History Characters Story Arcs & Quests